Editorial:
Reality
vs.
Demagoguery
10/09/98
To hear some politicians tell it, the phrase "harm reduction" is a smokescreen, a code word for a malevolent plot to make heroin available at candy counters and to gain popular acceptance for drug addiction as a way of life. But don't try getting away with such rhetoric in Cleveland this week, as a broad array of health care officials, researchers, treatment professionals and activists gather for the second annual conference of the Harm Reduction Coalition. As politicians in statehouses and in Washington fall over each other to pass legislation which will earn them the mantle of "tough on drugs," local health officials, who have to deal with the real costs of those policies, are finding that the harm reduction movement is providing practical and economically sound strategies for dealing with real problems. Long accepted in most of Europe as a pragmatic approach, harm reduction is finally becoming normalized on the streets, and in the health departments of cities across America. Harm reduction is a philosophy which says, "If people are going to use substances, be they legal, like alcohol or illegal like heroin, it is in the interest of both the community and the individuals affected to reduce the harms associated with that use." This includes allowing IV drug users access to clean syringes to prevent the spread of devastating diseases like AIDS and Hepatitis C, referral services for health care and drug treatment, information on the effects of drugs and on the various methods of administration, overdose prevention, housing and employment services, and much more. Harm reduction seeks to keep people alive and healthy so that they may live to get their lives together. Politicians who have made careers out of demonizing and persecuting unpopular minorities such as drug users see a problem with the approach. One Republican congressman, addressing needle exchange, said that since AIDS was a potential consequence of sharing syringes, it would be wrong to try to mitigate the chances of AIDS, and to thereby remove a disincentive to use drugs. Harm reductionists, of course, don't have the luxury of pontificating from an office on Capitol Hill. They see the ravages of AIDS first-hand, and they are determined to see that methods of preventing its spread are implemented among the populations they work with. Diana McCague is one of the attendees this week in Cleveland. She was recently arrested, for the second time, for running a needle exchange program in New Jersey in violation of state law. "People are using drugs" she said recently, "and although it would be great if they'd all stop, the fact is that many can't, or are not ready to face their addiction. It boggles my mind that we would rather pretend that this isn't the case than to prevent them from contacting and spreading deadly diseases. Outlawing clean needles is little more than state-assisted suicide. That is essentially what New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman is practicing. These people don't want to die. Doesn't it make sense to draw them into healthy contact with health workers rather than push them further underground where they are harming not only themselves but the community as well?" While it is deeply saddening that politicians, plying their trade far from the realities of the streets, have labeled McCague and others like her as criminals and deviants, it is heartening that local officials, on the front lines, are showing up to conferences like the one in Cleveland. Harm reduction is indeed being practiced in the US, and the numbers of its proponents are growing. Politicians, by their nature,
are followers. Very few of the creative and effective solutions to
real-world problems are handed down from on-high. Most bubble up
from the trouble-spots themselves. Harm reduction, the efforts of
community-based organizations to ameliorate the damage caused by substance
abuse and by the drug war, is certainly no different. "If drug use
is illegal," the politicians ask, "then why would we allow drug users to
have syringes?" And from the comfort of the rotunda, that question
seems legitimate. But ask a harm reductionist, someone who has seen
the devastation and who is working to do something about it, someone who
cares deeply about life and believes in the possibilities for positive
change, and they will tell you just how ridiculous that question really
is. "It's simple," says McCague, "dead addicts don't recover."
Adam
J. Smith
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